O'Conner saw his opportunity and was quick to take it, as the money he was grabbing was ill-gotten and its previous owner lay bullet-ridden in the nearby streets. He had been asked to search for a key on the body of the late Anthony “Long Box” Tolles. But when he saw the duffel bag crammed with bills of various denominations, he seized as many dollars as he could hold and booked it before the police’s delayed arrival. 

Tolles had pulled off a brazen robbery and triggered his own demise at the hands of the rival criminal he robbed. In addition to some seed money, his death provided O'Conner with an early life lesson in crime: how not to get caught.

"Gary Phillips has written a sharp and intelligent crime drama with well-developed characters, as well as a rich and satisfying plot. There are some excellent surprises on the way to a thrilling denouement in this action-packed novel."

Decades removed from his first heist, O’Conner is, by all appearances, a respectable business owner. In reality, he is a sophisticated thief who has pulled off more than a few capers since his teenage years, yet his intelligence and keen insight have kept him out of jail and still breathing. An associate has referred a potential client/co-conspirator to O’Conner, a young woman named Mavis Joyner, who wants to get revenge on tech titan Palmer Van Noy for stealing her technology. A prominent billionaire, Van Noy has built doomsday bunkers in and around Los Angeles. In addition to rooms and supplies, a large cache of money is secreted in a vault in one of the bunkers. By agreeing to take the job, O’Conner will need to assemble a worthy crew to help fleece one of the world’s richest men.

Generally, O’Conner doesn’t operate on the fly when planning a job. There is a need for research and reconnaissance so everything goes off without a hitch. However, his latest crime involves wrinkles with unavailable personnel and timeline issues for which he will need to adapt quickly to continue plotting his daring theft. As the countdown to zero hour approaches, equipment and nerve must be in abundance to pull off a lucrative crime. The break-in is merely the beginning of a complex operation that won’t be considered successful until O’Conner and every crew member is out of the bunker and miles away from law enforcement scrutiny. 

THE HAUL is a first-rate crime story about an exceptional thief who knows how to survive as well as he knows how to beat a high-line security system. O’Conner is an antihero with style, an honest crook who retains a loyalty to those closest to him. While the thrilling drama unfolds as the arrangements for the break-in progress, there are revealing flashbacks to O'Conner’s youth and how his formative years were shaped by friendships with those in both the legitimate and illegitimate worlds. 

Gary Phillips has written a sharp and intelligent crime drama with well-developed characters, as well as a rich and satisfying plot. There are some excellent surprises on the way to a thrilling denouement in this action-packed novel.